


The Pectorals of Teiresias

by executrix



Category: Hilary Tamar Mysteries - Sarah Caudwell, Implied Crossover
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-14
Updated: 2011-12-14
Packaged: 2017-10-27 07:54:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/293432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Selena has a missing client. Timothy has a fax machine. Cantrip has a lot to say. Hilary has specialised knowledge. Julia has a new friend. Ragwort has a Rolodex.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Pectorals of Teiresias

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ellen_fremedon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellen_fremedon/gifts).



_‘Did you,’ she [Selena] continued turning to Cantrip, ‘have a similar sort of time in Cambridge? Was the Black Mass being said in your College chapel? Were there witches weaving spells in the Senior Common Room? Were there warlocks waltzing in the quad?’_ (The Shortest Way to Hades, Penguin pb 1986, p. 78)

 _‘Vashti’s?’ said Ragwort with austere disapproval. ‘Vashti’s has a most unsavoury reputation. I have heard of it spoken of as a place frequented by females of unnatural propensity, seeking companions in disgraceful conduct.’  
‘I have heard it spoken of,’ said Selena, ‘as an agreeable little establishment where single women may enjoy one another’s company in relaxed and convivial surroundings. Still, we’re clearly thinking of the same place.’_(The Shortest Way to Hades, p. 97)

 

Rather to my surprise, when I presented myself at 62 New Square, none of the persons whom I expected to see there could be found in that den of Equity. Given the lateness in the year, it was nearly dark, although the hour was early enough that I suppose they could have been at the courts, or conferring with an instructing solicitor, or browbeating an adversary.

I had expected Henry, the clerk, to offer me a cup of tea. But the alcove once occupied by the brewing apparatus had been taken over by a large piece of the latest modern machinery, quite putting the Telex machine’s nose out of joint. ‘Your young friends mostly ignore it, Professor Tamar,’ Henry said, ‘But Mr. Shepherd’s mad for it. Every moment he isn’t in court, he’s hanging over it, waiting for it to spit out another bit of the roll of paper.’

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Where Shepherds watch their fax by night.’

Next, I looked in at The Corkscrew, but from there they had been absent in the autumn. By simple association of ideas, I turned to another hostelry of my acquaintance, where I did **not** expect to encounter any denizens of the Nursery.

‘Oh, dear God, Selena, please tell me that Cantrip isn’t here,’ I said, feeling much like the narrator of _A La Recherche du Temps Perdu_ stumbling about at the end of the seventh volume, encountering not single spies but battalions of persons he did not want to see, at least not quite in that context.

‘No, just Julia,’ Selena said. ‘It’s awfully good of her, really. She’s looking for…oh, I suppose she’s helping me to look for a client of mine. We were showing around a photograph that we had from before, we certainly couldn’t get one now. I suppose once we get to the bottom of everything, there might be tax implications.” She took a sip of ice-cold American beer, made a face, and put it down to chambrer. (Perhaps because certain activities have always been ascribed to neighbouring countries, the establishment in which we found ourselves chose to accompany them with alien ales.) ‘In fact it might revolutionize Revenue practice,” she said. She thought for a moment. “And conveyancing, of course.’

It would have been simplicity itself to spot Julia, so when I didn’t, I asked where she was.

‘That’s just the thing. In fact I’m awfully glad you’re here, because…well, do you see the barman?’

I shook my head. There was a half-filled glass of Mother’s Ruin in front of me, and I had settled down to observe the fauna in this nature preserve, secure in the knowledge that the denizens would deem me more or less invisible.

‘There seems to be another room, and, although I surmise that Julia was quite undeterred in, ah, penetrating its fastness, I should feel more comfortable if you were to see if Julia is unharmed.’

I rose to perform this errand. Selena continued reading _The Warden_. The room was so dark that she was forced to use her purportedly mobile phone as a sort of nightlight, coincidentally proclaiming her stewardship of one. Utilisation of this object was so expensive that, after prolonged consideration in the Nursery, Cantrip had been furnished a slip of paper with the last two digits of the number reversed. This benevolent deception was controversial. Although he was the most likely to misuse the knowledge, he was also the most likely to become embroiled in an emergency.

With what could only have been motives of genuine friendliness, the man on the next barstool asked Julia, ‘That book you’re reading? Is that the new Robert Ludlum? The one about the prison riot?’

She shook her head. ‘Trollope,’ she said.

At this point, Julia emerged, with the barman in tow. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Par for the course, really.’ It was not merely the absence of anyone behind the bar despite clamorous patrons that caused me to identify him as such. He was noticeably taller and more strongly built than Julia’s usual predilection, but I would not call him an unattractive man. In fact, I disputed between Beta plus plus/alpha minus? and Alpha minus/Beta plus.

He wore the establishment’s distinctive livery, which consisted in its entirety of lederhosen, braces, a bow tie, and what I believe are referred to as ‘Doc Martens.’ The gold signet ring on the little finger of his left hand cannot have been official issue, but it gave emphasis to his large and well-shaped hands.

‘He’s not there, Selena,’ Julia said. ‘And lots of people recognized the photo, but they haven’t seen in him the last few days.’ She adjusted her dress, repaired her lipstick, and gave a few ineffective swipes at her hair.

‘Just as well, I suppose,’ Selena said. ‘I should hate to think of ordinary creatures of the night getting more than they bargained for from evil creatures of the night.’

After this attractively Delphic remark, Selena escorted Julia and me to 62 New Street, where Ragwort and Cantrip awaited us.

‘We were…ah….’ Julia said.

‘Never you mind where, young Michael,’ Ragwort said.

‘And, quite fortuitously’ (I need not remark that Julia applied this word correctly to mean 'by chance') ‘Professor Tamar was there as well. We were…looking for Selena’s client. You know, the one she told you about.’

I knew whence they pursued him, whereas Cantrip knew why, which I suppose was a fair allocation of resources.

‘Oh, you don’t know, do you?’ Julia asked. ‘Sorry, Professor Tamar!’ Selena took up the thread.

‘In 1958, one Roberta Charteris-Cotter died unmarried and without issue. Her will, drafted in 1954, created a testamentary trust for a term of 25 years. She was the eldest of five; all her siblings were brothers. The eldest, in fact, Albert Charteris-Cotter, was a brother by profession: he was an Anglican Benedictine monk, so he had no issue either…’

‘You can’t just assume that,’ Cantrip said. ‘Plenty of those chaps go off the rails, you know. They’re only human.’

‘Or, he might have had a late-life vocation as a widower, and had lawful issue born in wedlock,’ Ragwort said.

‘We haven’t a mad monk in _Chancery!_ , have we?’ Cantrip asked. ‘Might go down a treat. He could anathematize Mr. Justice Heltapay. Or, we could have his kiddies turn up for the reading of the will, tremendous scandal…or not turn up if the mad monk bumped them off first…’

Selena gathered a pile of assorted correspondence, lifted it foot or so, and gaveled the heap onto the desk (where the papers promptly scattered) for silence. ‘The other brothers, Ethelbert, Gilbert, and Bertram Charteris-Cotter…you perceive a pattern here…are all also deceased. During their lifetimes, they received income distributions from the trust, at the discretion of the trustee. Their children continue to be income beneficiaries. Ethelbert had one daughter, who died in infancy. Gilbert has--or perhaps had, that is the point of contention--a son, Benedict. Benedict is—or was—to use an ancient locution, “not a marrying man.” Bertram Charteris-Cotter’s son Daniel and daughter Elise were known to be alive two weeks ago.’

‘Yes, but considering the track record of these Chambers, that doesn’t count for much,’ Cantrip said.

‘The point it, the trust will be terminating soon,’ Selena said. ‘With the remaining principal and accrued income—quite a lot, the trustees were if anything perhaps excessively discreet--to be distributed in equal shares to Roberta’s grand-nieces and nephews **then surviving.** So, as a matter of sound practice, we contact the beneficiaries from time to time, confirm that they **are** still surviving…’

‘…for example, when I’ve just got a bill from my tailor, the man has tragic delusions of getting paid,’ Cantrip said.

The others stared at him much as the celebrants of the Mysteries of Eleusis might have greeted someone who ushered a tour group into the sanctuary, waiting for the other flashbulb to light.

‘And confirm their contact details, banking information, and the like,’ Selena continued. ‘I mean to say, it’s not a very large trust, it is anticipated that at the time of distribution it should be about a hundred and fifty thousand pounds…’

‘So if Daniel and Elise manage to go another couple of weeks without dropping off the branch, they get seventy-five thousand quid each. Or possibly fifty,’ Cantrip said. ‘Depending on what’s become of Benedict.’

I surmised that they feared some foul play had befallen Benedict. Considering the dreadful deeds that have been wrought for hatpins, much less hats or twenty-five thousand pounds (for one malefactor) or twelve and a half thousand pounds (for a two-person conspiracy distributing equal shares), it seemed credible enough.

‘Then, I take it, Benedict Charteris-Cotter has disappeared, and you must either produce him unharmed, or determine if he has been the victim of some form of malversation?’

‘Fooled you!’ Cantrip said, with deep satisfaction.

‘Poor Henry had an awful experience,’ Julia took up the thread. ‘I’ve never seen him so shaken. He said that he’d just rung up a dead person. He had Benedict’s number, of course, and the first few times he phoned there was no answer, only the answerphone. But eventually someone picked up the phone and said that Benedict had died the day before and his body had been taken away to the mortuary and the funeral was going to be on Wednesday. It did seem a bit rushed…’

‘I don’t suppose he was a Jew?’ I asked, but there was a chorus of negation.

‘And we checked later, the woman who answered the phone was his flatmate, Lydia Grolier. She said that she found the body, and called the police, and they called his doctor. The doctor came over and said that Benedict was dead all right, and he’d been under his care, so he gave a certificate, and Lydia went and registered the death because she was the one who found the body. They made Daniel identify the body, which he did, so they went ahead buried him—Benedict, that is, not Daniel—on schedule.’

‘Ah. And you wonder if, given Daniel’s and Elise’s financial interest in the matter, that he was interred hugger-mugger and there should have been a more careful ruling-out of foul play? And now you are contemplating the wisdom of seeking an exhumation order, versus the public relations disaster that could result if your client died a regrettable but natural death?’

‘Not quite. Take a look at this, Professor Tamar,” Ragwort said, handing me a thin, crackly sheet of poor-quality paper:

 **VIA FACSIMILE  
From: Timothy Shepherd  
To: Idem  
Subject: Memorandum to Ms. Jardine**

 **Remind self to inform SJ that was at opera and saw her client BC-C. It WAS Lohengrin but he still looked distinctly ropy.**

‘It seems simple enough,’ I said. ‘As my quondam pupil said, Charteris-Cotter was unwell. Perhaps his exertions in connoisseurship proved too much for him, and he succumbed. Though he was rather young for a heart attack, sudden death due to aneurysms is not unknown.’

‘Yes, but look at the date stamp,’ Selena said. ‘It was dated on Thursday, which indeed was one of the nights _Lohengrin_ was being performed. It was not, however, received until Friday. Timothy was disgracefully late that morning, having wandered about a good deal of London trying to find a place with a facsimile machine he could use. Even he could see the absurdity of going directly to New Square to send a solipsistic communication from himself to himself. But the conversation that so agitated Henry…occurred on Tuesday of the same week.’

‘The time has been,’ Cantrip said, ‘that when the brains were out, the man was dead.’

‘Yes, well, with Cambridge furnishing the exceptions that prove the rule,’ Ragwort commenced.

I said, ‘So to the best of our information, Benedict Charteris-Cotter was dead on Monday, and appreciating music on Thursday night of the same week.’

‘Of course we wondered if he’d faked his own death,’ Ragwort said. ‘Although we couldn’t quite see why, when it was very much to his advantage to live just a bit longer. And it seems the rankest amateurism to enact a pageant of being dead in one part of London only to appear less than a week later in another part of London where it was quite plausible—as, indeed, occurred—that you would be seen by someone who knew you.’

‘Unless whatever made him look dead, gave him amnesia. The Tichbourne Identity, you might say,’ Cantrip said.

‘Or the Undiscovered Bourne Claimant,’ Ragwort said.

‘It’s not uncommon for persons to be revived, say, after a heart attack or after a clinical death on the operating table,’ Selena said. ‘And they are not treated as having died for juridical purposes.’

‘Not if it doesn’t take. That’s what Uncle Hereward says the Yanks call a “mulligan,”’ said Cantrip, who Golfed.

‘Or a de mortuis non curat lex,’ I said.

‘The term “little death” has already been assigned,’ Julia said.

‘But this chap seems to have seriously dead. Chronically,’ Cantrip said.

‘What about his flatmate, Miss Grolier? Has she any motive to do away with Benedict, or to participate in a deception?’

‘He seems to have died—if at all—intestate,’ Selena said, ‘And he hadn’t much except Expectations, which died with him, because his share of the trust cannot be distributed to any heirs he might have designated or any intestate takers. So if Miss Grolier did anything wrong, her motives are not likely to have been financial.’

‘We did consider the _Diabolique_ option, with Benedict in league with one of the others to pretend to be dead to frighten the third to death, but it did seem too far-fetched. They might all three be in league to produce some sort of expose of the Chancery Bar by making us look gullible, but that doesn’t seem on the cards either,’ Ragwort said. ‘But what is concerning us is that this is likely to have implications beyond this particular client.’

‘If this sort of thing gets around, you see,’ Cantrip chimed in.

‘At least with respect to income taxation, it is conventional to think of Death and Taxes as complementary rather than supplementary,’ Julia said. ‘Payments to the person when he or she is, as it were, aboveground, and then to his or her estate.’

‘Like the little whatchamacallems in a cuckoo clock,” Cantrip said helpfully.

‘But if this scheme is to be deranged…’

Selena frowned. ‘Has the twentieth century made conventional methods of defining life obsolete? The difficulties of proving a negative are well-known. We can determine that someone has not been reported dead, we can produce a living person who appears to be the person in question, but…must we now require an affidavit from our instructing solicitors as to whether the clients they send us are alive in the conventional sense of the term? And if so, how might it be proven?’

‘”Lend me a looking-glass,”’ I said.

‘You look perfectly all right, Professor Tamar,’ Cantrip said. ‘And, honestly, this is no time to worry about it anyway…’

‘”If that her breath will mist or stain the stone, Why then, she lives,”’ I continued inexorably.

‘I’m not sure a mirror would be at all helpful in this case,’ Ragwort said. ‘But in any event, we haven’t got Charteris-Cotter to examine.’

‘Good thing, really, that you’re here,’ Cantrip said, in reference to myself. ‘For once you might actually know something useful. I mean, it’s a medieval sort of thing to happen, isn’t it? What would they do then?’

‘My research deals primarily with tort law,’ I reminded him. ‘Surely no one has complained of being bitten by Selena’s client? He is not of noble stock, so I daresay that after payment of his best beast to the feudal lord and his second-best beast to the Church, the Church would have confiscated the rest for heresy or demoniac possession.’

‘It’s not just Revenue practice, it’s employment law as well. Can you chuck people out of their jobs just because they’re dead?’ Julia asked.

‘Shouldn’t think so, look at the Civil Service,” Ragwort said. Then he expressed some not-uninteresting observations about whether ability to appear at work during the daytime was essential enough to justify termination of employment of those who were incapacitated in that area.

‘So you see the problem,’ Julia said, returning the discussion to its main theme. ‘Insofar as we have credible testimony, bolstered by a death certificate, funeral, and burial, I think I could successfully argue that Benedict Charteris-Cotter is no longer “living.” But if he is observed strolling about town, in his habit as he lived, then it could certainly be argued that he is “surviving”.’

‘Shouldn’t we take instruction of counsel?’ Selena asked anxiously.

Ragwort paused, the telephone receiver in his hand. ‘That’s precisely what I’m doing,’ he said. ‘There’s a chap Sebastian knows…’

He was precluded from completing the thought by a shriek, followed by sounds of remonstrance. Cantrip had leapt out from the supply cupboard, brandishing a crucifix in the face of the temporary typist, who wore hijab, and accordingly required a good deal of mollification.

We returned to Ragwort’s desk. Ragwort stared fixedly at the unusual-looking envelope face-down on the desk. It was not of a color or proportion typical of modern stationery. It bore a seal of crimson wax stamped with the head of the Medusa. When I stretched out a fingertip (‘Don’t touch that, Professor Tamar!’ Ragwort had said. ‘It simply…appeared on my desk.’) it felt like vellum, but of a superb finish and thinness.

As we stared, the envelope opened of its own volition as inexplicably as it had arrived. The parchment inside granted Ragwort and myself the honour of presenting ourselves, in two hours’ time, at the Manuscript Collection of the British Library. We had just noted the room number when the letter burst into flame. My hand, just an inch away, felt no heat. Nothing arose from the ashes (indeed, there were no ashes).

Cantrip began to hum, and although all I could tell was that it was the tune he knew that wasn’t _God Save the Queen_ , my young friends assured me that it was the theme tune of some American television programme.

Of course I accompanied Ragwort to the named rendezvous. We were wise to allot more time than the mere geographical distance suggested, because the room number was not consonant with any easily deciphered system of classification, but somehow we got there at last.

We were greeted, somewhat familiarly, by what one might call our Virgil, a tall, handsome man clad in a tweed jacket, Oxford bags that were probably at least partially satirical (although also probably partially simply the only trousers the OpShop had that were long enough). He also wore a signet ring, although I didn’t have time to see if it was blazoned with the Medusa’s head.

‘Please follow me, Professor Tamar,’ he said, leaving Ragwort standing a bit awkwardly in a small, dark room made smaller by bookshelves lining the walls, and darker by filth coating the one small window.

‘I think you’ll enjoy seeing what we have in here.’ Sebastian Verity’s friend led me to a yet more hermetic chamber, where he closeted us behind a highly reinforced metal door that needed three keys to open. And, indeed, I was so consumed with pleasure that I feared the tiny room would combust as spontaneously as the invitation had done.

‘You seem to be the hinge of the matter,” he said. “Please don’t tell…well, one lot about what the other lot know.’

‘Of course I shan’t,’ I said. ‘If you will satisfy my curiosity as to the reason for the dual identity?’

‘Well, you see, the Watcher’s Council pay very little, treating it as an aristocratic preserve, but isn’t, quite, any more. And the British Library don’t pay me at all, because they consider me on secondment from the Council with regard to occult matters. Much as, I believe, that a person wishing to speak to an agent of KGB can enter any Soviet embassy anywhere and ask to see the Assistant Naval Attache.’ Then he grinned, for the first time making me cognizant of the accuracy of the sobriquet which Julia had applied to him. ‘The tips are awfully good. And I get first pick of the talent. The way my Mum always volunteered to sort the clothes at the parish jumble sale. I’ll just go and talk to Desmond, Professor Tamar. You can have a bit of a look around here. This problem is nothing we haven’t handled dozens of times before, and I can assure you that it will be taken care of quite promptly. Certainly before it becomes necessary to distribute the trust corpus.’

And he left me, for a blessed time, among a treasure of heaped manuscripts, many of which had obviously gone untouched since they were spirited away from their previous location (where, in turn, they may have been rescued from a plundered Abbey).

He came once again to fetch me, and Ragwort, looking paler than ever but far more silent, declined my offer of a drink at the Corkscrew, saying that he had to go home and change as he’d be going out later that night.

The next morning, as I endeavored to explain to the temporary typist how to decipher the few notes I had been able to scrawl on the cuff of the shirt I had worn the previous day, the regular inhabitants of the Nursery staged their entrances.

‘You’re late,’ Henry said reproachfully. ‘And, look at your overcoat, you’ve got dirt all along the hem.’

‘There was a small wooden box,’ Ragwort said, ‘I insisted that it received Christian burial.’

‘Over my objections—once is enough,’ his companion said. ‘Ah, good, there you are, Ms. Jardine. You can proceed in perfect good faith, upon termination of the trust, by distributing the corpus in equal shares to Daniel and Elise. There will be no…no one will contest the distribution.’

‘Ripper!’ Julia said, hanging up her overcoat and unwrapping the scarf from her neck. ‘What are you doing here? I didn’t recognize you with clothes on.’ (Perhaps a remark seldom uttered in chambers, but not implausible at 62 New Square or its fictional embodiment in _Chancery_.)

Cups of tea and biscuits were produced, and conclusions were drawn. I felt quite hard done by: what was the use of my suppressing an interesting bit of gossip if the person demanding confessional secrecy ruined it all by turning up?

Julia and Ragwort surrounded him, clamoring to know association with which one of them had been the more pleasurable. ‘Corblimey!’ was all that poor Rupert could manage.

**Author's Note:**

> Set in the early 1980s, when Men Were Men and Mobile Phones Were Enormous--and, I think it's fair to say, Rupert Giles was still in England.


End file.
